Theorycrafting, Computations, and General Observations from a Shadow Point of View

Important: there has been an important bugfix in SimulationCraft relating to the maximum number of Shadowy Apparitions allowed out at any given time. Sims are being rerun and this post will be updated when more correct data is available on Sunday 3/3.

Update 3/4: Blizzard has made more changes on the eve of 5.2’s release, specifically increasing Shadow Word: Pain’s damage by 25% and increasing the RPPM of the Legendary Meta Gem from 0.56 to 0.933. Because of this, these results are not valid and should be viewed in a historical manner only. A new post will be made once these changes are in game and it appears no more hotfixes will be made. I apologize for any confusion or for getting anyone’s hopes up. — Twintop

Usual disclaimer: the following information is as of the Mist of Pandaria 5.2 PTR build 16650, released on February 27, 2013, and may not be accurate once future patches are released.

One trend that sticks out immediately is that the combination of Mind Flay (Insanity) and Power Infusion is a very powerful combination in all encounters that aren’t non-stop movement. Another surprising (or not so surprising) change is that Twist of Fate has lost it’s edge as the go-to Level 75 talent choice. This is largely because Power Infusion‘s +5% damage done is applied to ~19%+ of the fight duration, whereas Twist of Fate‘s +15% damage done has an uptime around ~17%; this is only part of the story, though, since Twist of Fate grants only increased damage while Power Infusion also provides a 20% Haste buff, meaning when used in conjunction with the refreshing of DoTs and casting Mind Flay (Insanity) you are able to pump out more damage overall.

What does this mean for our stat weights in a 1-target situation though?

Looking at the ‘Best Two Per Fight’ line–the average PP values of the top two DPS talent combinations for each of the five fight types–we can see that the value of Hit/Spirit is much higher than it was for 5.0/5.1. This can be directly attributed to having our damage bonus from Shadowform being raised from 20% to 25%, meaning that missed damage opportunities are much costlier now than they were before. This increased importance on hit and being hit-capped can also be indirectly attributed towards Mind Flay (Insanity) being such a valuable talent with a limited casting timeframe, meaning that if you cast Devouring Plague and waste a GCD (or potentially multiple GCDs) trying to cast Mind Flay (Insanity) but end up missing, you’re leaving a lot of DPS on the table that cannot be regained through quick reaction times. For the other secondary stats, they are tightly bunched up with Haste barely squeaking out ahead. I would like to take this time to note, however, that this profile has over 15,000 Haste rating from gear. Even at this extreme point it is still the top secondary stat, displaying that Haste stacking is a viable if not the optimal gearing strategy for Shadow Priests, assuming you have the Legendary Meta Gem.

The difference in damage done with two targets from the highest and lowest DPS talent choices is much, much closer than it is with just one target — 2.06% – 3.00% delta (4,049 – 6,112 damage) vs. 6.75% – 7.87% delta (10,398 – 13,689 damage) for non-Heavy Movement sim types. Tying back to the points made above on the 1-target results, this shows how much more potent our DoTs are since the Shadowform and Power Infusion buffs have occurred.

What does this homogenization of damage mean for stat weights, though?

There aren’t a whole lot of differences here between 1-target and 2-target for stat weights. Hit/Spirit is very important, Mastery barely sqweaks past Haste in value with Crit coming in a relatively close third. Since most of our damage in multitarget situations comes from our DoTs ticking, it makes sense to see Mastery neck and neck with Haste for the top secondary stat spot.

Now lets put these two sets of data together to create a set of composite stat weights that encompass both single target and two target encounters:

Not surprisingly, the composite still shows Hit/Spirit being the most important secondary stat, followed by Haste, Mastery, and Crit.

Let me make this painfully obvious and excruciatingly clear: there is absolutely no excuse to NOT be hitcapped. Our spells do more damage per cast in 5.2 than they did in 5.1 by a wide margin. Between the increased importance of being hitcapped and having more secondary stats to play with thanks to entering a new tier with an extra 15-35 ilvls on gear, there should not be a compelling reason to avoid getting 5100 Hit/Spirit.

With all of this being said, here is my recommendation for gearing priority for 5.2 once you have the Legendary Meta Gem:

Trying to get it posted today. With the SA bug, Crit and Mastery were being undervalued. This along with the LMG plus all of the Haste breakpoints you can encounter at high haste are making it difficult to provide an accurate depiction of where we stand from a *stat weights* point of view. Since this post is about gearing with the LMG, I’m not too concerned if this post takes a few days to get a proper update.

With that being said, tonight I’ll have a post talking about Normal T15 / ilvl 522 / gearing without the LMG.